The Food and Agriculture Organization was one of the first
specialized agencies created by the United Nations, as it was
established concurrently with the United Nations itself. Its
purposes are to raise levels of nutrition and standards of
living; to secure improvements in the efficiency of the
production and distribution of all food and agricultural products
from farms, forests, and fisheries; to better the conditions of
rural populations; and, by these means, to contribute to an
expanding world economy and ensure humanity's freedom from hunger
(UN 1980). Thus FAO's main thrust is improving agricultural
production (e.g., food, fibre, wood, and fish} as a means of
raising the standard of living, especially in rural areas. It is
involved to a lesser degree in accessory activities such as data
collection, population planning, and food contamination
standards.

In budgetary terms FAO is one of the largest specialized
agencies of the UN system. In 1982-1983 its working budget was
$367 million, and another $683 million was expected to be
provided from outside sources (FAO 1981a). Traditionally UNDP has
been the major source of outside funds, but the proportion of
funds from other sources has increased from 14 per cent in 1970
to more than 50 per cent in 1982-1983. A variety of trust funds
account for the bulk of these extrabudgetary funds. Generally,
these trust funds are received for support of specific programmes
such as emergency relief, food security, and tree-planting.
Another major source of extra-budgetary funds is government
contributions for FAO projects. A summary of the estimated
expenditures by programme for the bienniums 1980-1981 and
1982-1983 is given in table 16.

As can be seen from the table, the technical and economic
programmes are at the heart of FAO, for they include agriculture,
forestry, and fisheries. Together these account for nearly half
the regular budget, but, more importantly, 91 per cent of the
extra-budgetary funds are directed towards this division. The
emphasis is on agriculture, with fisheries and forestry each
accounting for less than 10 per cent of FAO's total funding.

FAO's technical and economic programme is organized into a
series of programmatic areas, which are presented together with
their respective financing in table 17. FAO dwarfs the
expenditures of other agencies, such as Unesco, in most fields
relating to land use and productivity. In selected areas (e.g.,
desertification) UNSO may play a major role, but FAO's size and
long-standing presence gives it a preeminence that it is loathe
to surrender. Still the creation of agencies such as UNSO,IFAD,
and UNEP have all chipped away at FAO's responsibilities. One
indication of this overall trend is that FAO's share of UNDP
funds has dropped to about 25 per cent, as compared with 31 per
cent in 1972 (FAO 1981a).

TABLE 16. FAO programme and budget, 1980-1983

Major
programme

Regular
programme

Extra
budgetary funds (estimated)

Total
funds
1982-1983

1980-1981
approved budget

1982-1983
budget

$000

%

$000

%

$000

$000

%

General Policy and Direction

Governing bodies

8,827

3.2

11,206

3.0

-

11,206

1.1

Policy, direction, and

planning

5,858

2.1

7,235

2.0

3,387

10,622

10

Legal

2,498

0.9

3,153

0.9

267

3,420

0.3

Liaison

5,889

2.1

7,162

1.9

626

7,788

0.7

Subtotal

23,072

8.3

28,756

7.8

4,280

33,036

3.1

Technical and Economic
Programmes

Agriculture

97,132

34.9

127,929

34.8

475,806

603,73

57.4

Fisheries

16,784

6.0

21,651

5.9

80,081

101,732

9.7

Forestry

11,340

4.1

14,701

4.0

66,085

80,786

7.7

Subtotal

125,256

45.0

164,281

44.7

621,972

786,253

74.8

Development Support
Programmes

Field programme planning and
liaison

3,319

1.2

4,502

1.2

7,694

12,196

1.2

Investment

13,608

4.9

18,539

5.0

16,976

35,515

3.4

Special programmes

1,767

0.6

2,182

0.6

350

2,532

0.2

FAO representatives

20,866

7.5

34,483

9.4

1,325

35,808

3.4

Programme management

608

0.2

714

0.2

800

1,514

0.1

Subtotal

40,168

14.4

60,420

16.4

27,145

87,565

8.3

Technical Co-operation
Programme

32,638

11.7

47,387

12.9

-

47,387

4.5

Support Services

Information and
documentation

13,122

4.7

17,157

4.6

4,771

21,928

2.1

Administration

30,196

10.8

33,569

9.1

14,666

48,235

4.6

Programme management

1,154

0.4

1,361

0.4

5,015

6,376

0.6

Subtotal

44,472

15.9

52,087

14.1

24,452

76,539

7.3

Common Services

12,534

4.5

14,485

3.9

5,198

19,683

1.9

Contingencies

600

0.2

600

0.2

-

600

0.1

Grand Total

278,740

100.0

368,016

100.0

683,047

1,051,063

100.0

Source: FAO 1981b

Overall, 22 per cent of the regular budget and 35 per cent of
the extra-budgetary funds are devoted to Africa. Excluding
headquarters costs, the percentage of funds allocated to Africa
has increased from 31 per cent in 1976-1977 to 39 per cent in
1981 (FAO 1981b). This high level of assistance is due to the
facts that per capita food production in Africa has declined
nearly 10 per cent between 1969 and 1981, onequarter to one-third
of the population are malnourished or undernourished, the
majority of the least-developed countries are in Africa, and food
production must be increased while trying to maintain the export
earnings of cash crops.

FAO projects in the Sahel include the control of livestock
diseases-such as trypanosomiasis, tsetse fly infestation, and
bovine pleuropneumonia-control of crop pests and postharvest
losses, training and technology development, grazing-lands
management, gathering and evaluation of information and
statistics, developing food and nutrition policies, utilization
of marine resources in the exclusive economic zones, meeting
fuelwood demand, and strengthening national agricultural and
forestry institutions.

In its overall policies FAO has followed the general trend
within the UN system of decentralizing its activities and
concentrating on the poorest of the poor. Specifically it claims
to be emphasizing food crops rather than export crops, although
it recognizes the need to earn foreign exchange. It also
recognizes the need for land reform, and it took the relatively
progressive step of sponsoring the World Conference on Agrarian
Reform and Rural Development in 1979. As with the other UN
conferences, any follow-up activities are dependent on the
political will in a given country or region, and in this area
changes-no matter what FAO's position is-will be slow. FAO is
also placing a continuing emphasis on "integrated rural
development" and pushing "forestry for community
development", although again it is difficult to fully
evaluate the effects of these concepts at the field level.

FAO has also been relatively successful in its efforts to
cooperate with a variety of funding agencies besides UNDP. For
example, it often participates in "multi-donor
missions" to develop projects, and then becomes the
executing agency for those projects in its sphere of expertise.
It also established a special investment centre in 1966 to help
formulate projects for donors, and from 1977 through 1980 this
centre played a role in formulating 137 projects worth $8,500
million (FAO 1981 b). Many of these projects have been developed
by the FAO/World Bank Co-operative Programme, and similar links
have been or are being built with multilateral funding
organizations such as the International Fund for Agricultural
Development, the regional development banks, the Arab Bank for
Economic Development in Africa, etc. (FAO 1979).

FAO's Technical Co-operation Programme works on a different
basis, as it is intended to provide short-term assistance in
response to requests from governments. The original emphasis was
on training and technical assistance in the case of emergencies
caused by drought, agricultural pests, or diseases. Increasingly,
however, assistance has been provided to governments (or the
Investment Centre) in order to help attract other funds. About 39
per cent of the programme's resources have been devoted to
Africa, and the work has tended to concentrate on plant
protection, animal health, and seed production.

It is interesting to note that the increase in FAO's budget
from 1980-1981 to 1982-1983 was expected to be 32 per cent. This
is particularly significant in view of the fact that most of the
other UN agencies are experiencing little or no real growth. As
might be expected, many of the major donors opposed the scale of
the increase while reaffirming their commitment to fight hunger
and malnutrition. Many of the objections centred around the fact
that just over half the budget will be spent on established posts
in Rome (Overseas Development 1981). It is doubtful that future
budgets will allow increases of a similar scale.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

The International Atomic Energy Agency came into existence in
1957 when its charter was ratified by 18 countries. Its two
primary purposes are to stimulate the peaceful uses of atomic
energy and to help limit and control the military use of atomic
energy. Initially its work focused on the development and use of
radiation techniques in medicine, agriculture, industry, and
water resources development. With the commercial development of
nuclear power, IAEA's emphasis has shifted to promoting the use
of nuclear power and the economic, safety, and nonproliferation
aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle (IAEA 1977).

With an operating budget of over $85 million in 1981 and a
staff of 1,600, IAEA is involved in everything from agricultural
research using radioisotopes to uranium prospecting and food
irradiation. Its technical assistance budget was over $24 million
in 1981. Voluntary contributions were the source of over half of
the technical assistance budget, while assistance in kind and
contributions for particular projects provided another 15 and 11
per cent respectively. Just over 20 per cent ($5 million)
originated from UNDP projects that were being executed by IAEA.
In general, the level of UNDP-sponsored activities has been
relatively constant, but there has been continued rapid growth in
technical assistance activities sponsored by other sources.

Of the $21 million actually expended for technical assistance,
47 per cent was used for equipment, 29 per cent for fellowships,
and 24 per cent for outside experts ( IAEA 1982). Like other
agencies, IAEA has been building up a surplus of funds as a
result of overestimating the costs of certain projects, the
inevitable lags in implementation, and the fact that some
expected expenses simply are not incurred. Another factor
contributing to this surplus is the accumulation of
non-convertible currencies.

Given the relatively sophisticated nature of IAEA's work, it
is not surprising that less than one-quarter of its technical
assistance funds are being devoted to Africa. The main area of
emphasis in Africa has been on the use of isotopes and radiation
in agriculture, and secondarily in biology, medicine, and
industry. Mineral development is another major component of
IAEA's activities in Africa, and in some of the more developed
countries IAEA is assisting with the general development of
atomic power. At present only Mali, Niger, and Senegal are
members of IAEA, and activities in the CILSS countries in 1981
were limited to a few small projects in each of the three member
countries (IAEA 1982). Of course the Sahel benefits from a
variety of other research projects being undertaken elsewhere,
such as control of the tsetse fly through the sterile-male
technique, more effective techniques for applying fertilizers,
the use of radiation-induced mutations in plant breeding, and the
analysis of trace-element deficiencies and of the presence of
pollutants in fish and oils. Much of this research is done in
collaboration with FAO or other agencies.

International Fund for Agricultural Development
(IFAD)

The newest specialized agency in the UN system is the
International Fund for Agricultural Development. Wary of creating
yet another agency that would lack sufficient resources to
accomplish its intended goals, the General Assembly mandated in
1976 that IFAD could not come into existence until pledges
exceeded $1,000 million. That level of commitment was reached in
December 1976, and IFAD began operating in late 1977.

IFAD is conceived primarily as a bank giving loans for
agricultural development. At present three types of loans are
provided: (1) ordinary loans, which carry an interest rate of 8
per cent for 15 years with a grace period of 3 years, (2)
intermediate-term loans, which carry an interest rate of 4 per
cent for 20 years with a grace period of 5 years, and (3) highly
concessional loans, which have only a service charge of 1 per
cent, a maturity period of 50 years, and a grace period of 10
years. In addition, up to 12.5 per cent of the funds committed in
any financial year can be outright grants (IFAD 1978). So far, 70
per cent of IFAD's lending has been highly concessional loans to
lowincome countries.

IFAD is concentrating its activities on rural areas and the
poorest sector of the population; one criterion is that any
project must not have a regressive effect on income distribution
(IFAD 1979). In its structure and governing board, l FAD is
designed to counterbalance the World Bank, which is often viewed
as conservative, interfering, and Western-dominated. IFAD's
governing body is tripartite, with equal representation of OECD
countries, OPEC countries, and developing countries. IFAD also
claims to be more flexible in its requirements for counterpart
contributions from governments, since many of the poorest
countries can ill afford to provide items such as counterpart
staff and support services, especially when a number of
large-scale projects are operating at the same time and competing
for scarce counterpart funds and scarcer managerial talent.

The funding of IFAD is also based on a tripartite arrangement,
with $1,100 million expected in contributions for 1981-1983. Of
this, $620 million was to come from the developed countries, $450
million from the oil-exporting countries, and $30 million from
other developing countries. These contributions, plus $240
million in carry-over from the first set of contributions, were
expected to allow annual expenditures to rise to $435 million in
1983. However, the general reluctance of the Western donors to
increase their contributions, combined with the large drop in
oil-derived income in the OPEC countries, resulted in
contributions falling short of the 1981-1983 target. Hence IFAD
has been forced to reduce its lending to approximately $310
million per year (UN Chronicle 1984), roughly 10 per cent below
1980-1981 levels (IFAD 1982). Continuing weakness in oil prices
recently led to a proposal to slightly shift the burden of
financing from the OPEC countries to the industrialized
countries. This met with stiff resistance from the United States,
and so IFAD's level of funding will remain constant in the near
term.

Between 1977 and the end of 1982 IFAD made over 100 loans
worth a total of $1,500 million and provided $60 million in
technical assistance grants. Large concessional loans were
provided to Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta for integrated rural
development projects. Mauritania obtained a similar loan for an
irrigation project, and a $5 million loan was given to the Gambia
for a project to assist smallholder agriculture. The loans to
both the Gambia and Upper Volta were supplemented by small
technical assistance grants. Over half of the technical
assistance funds, however, were provided to a variety of
established institutions for research purposes. Overall, l FAD is
trying to take a more active role in initiating loan requests
rather than relying on suggestions made by other agencies (IFAD
1982).

International Labour Organisation (ILO)

The International Labour Organisation was founded in 1919, and
in 1946 it became the first specialized agency associated with
the United Nations. Its purpose is to contribute to lasting peace
by promoting social justice, and to improve labour conditions and
living standards through international action. More specifically,
ILO tries to serve

as the conscience of the world of labour, as a meeting place
for governments, employers, and workers, and as an impartial
observer of social phenomena and to spearhead action in the
service of member states.

This socially relevant mandate has influenced the philosophy
of ILO and - in the view of some - made it a very political
organization. To protest the work and political stance of ILO,
the United States-which contributes 25 per cent of ILO's regular
budget-withdrew in November 1977. Since other countries could not
take up much of the slack, l LO was forced to slash its budget by
22 per cent and reduce its staff. The United States rejoined ILO
two years later, but it took some time to build activities back
up to their previous level. This, combined with UNDP's liquidity
crisis in 1975-1976, meant that the 1982-1983 budget was the
first "normal" budget in six years.

ILO is one of the larger specialized agencies in the UN
system, with a regular budget of $245 million for 19821983. An
additional $288 million of outside funding was expected for a
variety of technical assistance and other activities, but this
was adjusted to $223 million in 1982 (ILO 1982), while the final
figure was only $183 million. This reduction was due primarily to
the drop in UNDP-financed activities, which traditionally have
constituted more than half of ILO's outside funding (ILO 1984).
To a certain extent the decline in UNDP funds has been
compensated for by an increase in multilateral, bilateral, and
trust funds, but these are not expected to show major increases
in the near future.

ILO's 1984-1985 budget was set at $256 million, representing
an increase of only 2.6 per cent. Outside funds for technical
assistance activities are estimated at $167 million (ILO 1984).
As a result of the decline in UNDP funds, lLO will be forced to
depend more on its own budget for technical assistance and other
programme activities. At present, approximately onethird of the
regular budget is devoted to the technical programme. Some of the
major topic areas are industrial relations, working conditions
and the environment, employment and development, international
labour standards and human rights, and training. These topics are
furthered by means of research, publications, international
meetings, the drafting of international covenants, etc. (ILO
1980).

ILO has been attempting to decentralize its field activities.
A network of regional offices has been established in Africa,
with an office in Dakar responsible for the Sahelian countries.
The extra-budgetary activities tend to concentrate on either
training or employment and development. Training projects vary
considerably in terms of the level of training, target audience,
and length of training. Employment and development often involve
labour-intensive development activities. UNDP-supported projects,
discussed earlier, include vocational training, establishing
special management institutes, and assistance to smallscale
artisans and entrepreneurs. Other types of projects may be
concerned with technical advice, social security, health and
safety of workers, etc. In summary, lLO is very active in the
Sahel, but its effect on natural resource use is primarily
through the long-term and indirect processes of education,
training, and improving management capability.

Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief
Co-ordinator (UNDRO)

UNDRO began operations in March 1972 with a dual mandate. Its
first responsibility is to co-ordinate relief in response to
natural disasters and civil disorders. In this connection UNDRO
attempts to maintain information on the location, type, and
amount of emergency supplies available and on the emergency needs
of countries. In all these functions UNDRO's ability to respond
and co-ordinate is dependent on information provided to it by
donor countries and organizations. Hence the UNDP Resident
Co-ordinators must be regarded as playing a key role in UNDRO's
efforts. The second part of UNDRO's mandate is to provide
technical assistance in the fields of planning and predisaster
preparedness (UNGA 1981b).

From the beginning UNDRO has been hampered by very limited
financial resources and uncertainty regarding its precise task
and priorities. In general, 60 per cent of its resources are
devoted to co-ordination, 30 per cent to preparedness, and 10 per
cent to disaster prevention, but there is a paucity of actual
project funding. For 1980-1981 salaries consumed 78 per cent of
the $4.8 million budget. Three trust funds have been set up, but
in 1980 contributions for disaster prevention and pre-disaster
planning totalled $46,820; for emergency relief, $4,484; and for
strengthening UNDRO, $550,937 (UNGA 1981c). Furthermore, the
amount of emergency relief channelled through UNDRO has dropped
from an annual average of $1.7 million in 1973-1976 to an average
of $430,000 from 1977 to 1980. Since UNDRO has essentially no
emergency funds, the United Nations provided $360,000 as
emergency relief funds for 1981, with a $30,000 ceiling on
assistance to any one disaster. From 1972 until mid1980 UNDRO
made 114 emergency allocations, totalling $1.8 million, which was
slightly more than 1 per cent of all UN emergency aid for that
period.

In the Sahel UNDRO has provided emergency flood relief to
Senegal and Upper Voita, flown in generators to the Gambia, and
provided assistance in Chad. In terms of technical assistance, a
pre-disaster planning project has taken place in Senegal, and
funds were given to Upper Volta for a fellowship (UNGA 1978,
1981b). As explained in chapter 2, UNDRO's assistance to the
Sahel during the drought was very limited.

In 1980 the UN Joint Inspection Unit, which conducts indepth
reviews of the performance of various UN bodies, issued a report
which severely criticized UNDRO. Specifically it described
UNDRO's activities as haphazard and erratic, and recommended that
its staff should be cut in half and its mandate be reduced to
co-ordination in the case of sudden natural disasters. Apparently
political considerations have dominated staff selection and
promotion, leading to a further decline in morale and
effectiveness (Guest 1980).

In summary, UNDRO appears to be increasingly dependent on the
United Nations for its core support, and contributions for both
emergency aid and technical assistance are dropping. UNDRO's
capacity to carry out its mandate, therefore, is dependent on the
generosity of larger bodies. At present there doesn't appear to
be the political will to resolve the situation, but if budgets
continue to tighten, the General Assembly may be forced to take
some precedentsetting action.

Unesco, established in 1946 and based in Paris, is one of the
largest specialized agencies within the UN system. Its broad
responsibilities cover education, science, and culture, and its
activities fall into two main areas, reflecting a dual mandate.
In the first area -facilitating international intellectual
cooperation-it is concerned with everything from copyrights to
the support of a wide variety of scientific organizations and
cultural affairs. The second area is more developmentoriented and
could be termed technical assistance in a broad sense. In this
latter category most of the operating funds are obtained from the
World Bank, UNDP, or other organizations which use Unesco as an
executing agency. Although these technical-assistance activities
also cover a broad spectrum of topics, there is a concentration
in education and culture, particularly since UNEP, FAO, WHO, WMO,
etc. can claim greater expertise in their respective scientific
fields. Nevertheless, Unesco tries to maintain a presence in
important areas such as ecology, energy, and the basic sciences,
and it provides a small amount of seed money for research and
training. It has been reasonably successful in raising additional
funds to further most of these activities, even though these more
topical areas generate the most competition from other UN
agencies. In the basic sciences and areas such as curriculum
development other agencies are less active, for Unesco is
regarded as the dominant agency within the UN system in the field
of education.

For the 1981-1983 biennium Unesco's regular budget was set at
$625 million. Another $379 million is expected in outside funds,
with two-thirds of this coming from other UN agencies. If we
exclude the amount reserved for currency fluctuations, the two
largest programmes in Unesco are education and the natural
sciences, with 17 and 11 per cent of the regular budget
respectively. More important, these two sectors attract 46 and 35
per cent of the outside funds. The next largest programme is
culture and communication, which is allocated 8 per cent of both
the regular and outside funds (Unesco 1981).

TABLE 18. Unesco natural science budget, 1981-1983 ($)

Theme

Regular programme

UN sources

Other sources

Total

Science and society/science
and technology education

2,387,000

-

-

2,387,100

Science and technology
policies

6,552,600

3,000,000

190,000

9,742,600

Scientific and technological
research and training

24,800,400

62,400,000

6,400,000

93,600,400

Integrated rural development

211,000

-

150,000

361,000

Mineral and energy resources

6,745,200

9,200,000

400,000

16,345,200

Man and the biosphere

8,218,300

9,300,000

5,000,000

22,518,300

Water resources

6,824,300

10,000,000

1,185,000

18,009,300

Ocean and coastal marine
systems

12,146,700

16,880,000

6,250,000

35,276,700

Information systems and
services

1,333,000

1,000,000

1,000,000

3,333,000

Total

69,218,600

111,780,000

20,575,000

201,573,600

Source: Unesco 1979

As with most of the other specialized agencies, UNDP
traditionally has been the main source of outside funds. In
1979-1980, for example, UNDP provided about 50 per cent of the
extra-budgetary funds. Altogether UN sources were responsible for
more than 80 per cent of Unesco's outside funding, with UNFPA,
the World Bank Cooperative Programme, and UNEP the other major UN
sources. For 1984-1985 UN sources were expected to provide just
64 per cent of the outside funds, and UNDP's share was
considerably less than half (Unesco 1984).

To give some idea of the breadth of activities relevant to
natural resources, the key elements of the natural-science
programme are presented in table 18. Within the division of
natural sciences, "scientific and technological research and
training" attracts over 50 per cent of the outside funds. In
fact, almost all these funds are for training, indicating again
that it is in education and training that Unesco is able to
dominate, and this is where most of the outside funds are
directed.

Africa receives at least a third of all project funds.
Typically, over half of the project funds are devoted to
providing outside expertise, with the balance being divided among
equipment, training, and subcontracts. l n 1979- 1980 there were
36 operational field projects in the seven countries that are the
main concern of this report, ranging from solar energy to
curriculum development.

Activities financed by Unesco's regular budget tend to be much
smaller in scale. Generally these are grants ("seed
money") for seminars, research projects, and fellowships. Of
particular interest is the Man and the Biosphere programme, which
consists of a matrix of over a dozen different projects from the
humid tropics to arid lands, and from biosphere reserves to urban
ecosystems. While there are a number of activities of some
relevance, the limited funding prevents a major contribution.
Unesco basically provides a framework into which national
governments can put projects, which must largely be financed
either by the respective government or by another agency. As
examples of this modus operandi, there are two large
"integrated" arid-lands projects with Unesco's label,
but almost all the funding comes from UNEP and other agencies
(Unesco 1979).

In summary, Unesco's major projects in the Sahel tend to be
financed by UNDP and are typically concerned with such things as
the establishment of an engineering school in Mali or the reform
of elementary education in Chad. A wide range of studies are
being carried out in the Sahel and fellowships and small-scale
grants are being provided, but the total of these in financial
terms is quite small. Of course, over the long term the
cumulativebenefits of such activities may be considerable, but
the direct impact of Unesco's efforts on the natural resources
base is rather small. It should be remembered, however, that
Unesco did have a rather large research programme on arid lands
in the 1950s and 1960s, and this helped lead to the realization
that the problem of arid lands management is not the amount of
information but the effective utilization of this knowledge (see,
e.g., Mabbutt 1979).

In the last several years Unesco has come under increasing
criticism. One major cause was a proposal to license foreign
journalists, as this was viewed in most Western countries as a
violation of the freedom of the press. Critics have then gone on
to note the increasing politicization of Unesco and its ponderous
bureaucracy. (For 1984-1985, 61 per cent of the regular budget is
for headquarters and field-staff salaries and benefits [Unesco
1984] ). In late 1983 the United States gave official notice that
it intended to withdraw from Unesco because of policy and budget
questions, and the United Kingdom and Singapore later followed
suit.

Because the United States and the United Kingdom respectively
provided 25 and 5 per cent of Unesco's regular contributions,
their withdrawal will force a major reduction in the 1985-1986
budget. Since discretionary funds are easier to cut than fixed
costs, there is likely to be a larger reduction in programmatic
activities than in staff costs. Although Unesco has shown some
ability over the past few years to generate outside funds to
replace the declining UN contributions, realistically only a
small proportion of the lost funds can be expected to be replaced
by increased donations.

As a result of these developments the future course of Unesco
is uncertain. The combined withdrawal of the three countries
tends to suggest that they may stay out of the organization for
longer than the two years that the United States was out of I LO.
It is not clear whether such actions will indeed force Unesco to
make significant shifts in its policy and programmes. In any
case, the idealistic glue which bound countries together in
Unesco, despite disagreements over policy and specific
activities, has clearly dissolved. The shattering of this unity
will have repercussions throughout the UN system, and the
political orientation of the observer will be critical in
determining whether these are positive or negative. The situation
at Unesco should also help expose the fallacy that a political
body, such as the governing bodies of most UN organizations, can
be expected to be "impartial" and can satisfy all
members.